There is a demand for being informed on the contents or properties of broadcasting programs. This demand for information may be satisfied technically by means of so-called broadcast monitoring services. For a recognition and analysis of broadcast contents, fingerprinting or watermark methods, for example, are utilized in the monitoring products. The sources, that is the broadcast contents, may be received in a variety of ways, such as terrestrially, per satellite, per cable or per internet. In general, demands on monitoring products are fastness, low complexity, reliability and fail safety.
Typically, point-to-point connections are established for the reception of broadcast programs offered via the internet (e.g. simulcasts, webcasts, etc.). Here, the data is transferred from the source (streaming server) to the sink (streaming client, e.g. on a consumer PC in a private household) per internet streaming. For the reception and playback of the broadcast program offered, software players (e.g. Winamp, Realplayer, Windows Media Player) are typically employed.
For short-time connections as necessitated by the end user, this usually works without problems. However, in order to operate a monitoring service, it is desired to be able to receive the program around clock and with as few interruptions as possible so as to be able to ascertain the monitoring data in a consistent manner. Here, the following problems may occur on the reception side:
The streaming server terminates the transmission of the data after a certain period.
The data is not transmitted on time due to “data congestion”—as a result of insufficient transmission capacities in the network.
The point-to-point connection is interrupted at certain intervals by internet providers (not the streaming server), such as during an IP change on DSLs.
An error in the reception/playback software occurs, which results in the discontinuation of the reception activities.
The result of all these problems typically is that software players receiving and reproducing the streaming offer will terminate and not resume their activities. Thus, in this case, the monitoring activities also cannot be continued.
One solution to the problem consists in human interaction as it would occur with the end user, for example, who whishes to listen to a broadcast program per internet for short periods of time only. That is, if the human listener perceives that a multimedia signal is no longer present at the output of the streaming client, they will start the program anew. The drawbacks of this method are:
Excessive delay in the resumption of the monitoring
Extremely high costs as a human worker needs to constantly monitor the condition of the reception.
DE 19511087 A1 describes a method of automatically switching on replacement connections via the ISDN network in the case of faulty dedicated or standard connections.
US 2002/0150102 A1 discloses a system of analyzing a streaming medium with respect to its quality.
WO 2004/029756 A2 discloses a user interface in a communications network, wherein a server is connected to the internet, and a wireless telephone network and a wireless LAN are connected to the internet.